Saturday 4 April 2015

8 Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts (6)

Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts is a weekly blogging event hosted by Bookishly Boisterous. It allows
book bloggers (and non-book bloggers) to write about pretty much anything, bookish or otherwise (i.e. sharing
exciting plans for the weekend, rants on things they've encountered during the week etc.)

1. More than a month has gone by (again) without me posting anything here. I really do want to, but there are only so many hours in a day and so many things to do... I did write two other things though: a guest post about The March Family Letters for Hamlette's 'Little Women read-along' and an article about two nativity 'adaptations' for the newest issue of Femnista.


 


 2. A while ago, in another 'Bookish and Not-So-Bookish Thoughts' post, I talked about how I had ordered a Medieval dress. Well, it arrived a while ago and I also ordered some other things to make my Medieval 'look' complete. I'm not too fond of the cap, but it is historically accurate, as no decent woman would go about with bare head in the Middle Ages. (The jug has nothing to do with my costume, the person who took the picture thought it would be fun if I was holding that). At the end of April I finally get a chance at wearing this costume as I will go to a Medieval/Fantasy festival with my friends from the swordfighting group! I'm looking forward to it a lot!



3. Talking about costumes, two weeks ago I went to a museum exhibition about 19th century fashion. It was so great to see real dresses from this, one of my favourite eras and to learn about the many changes in fashion that this century saw. They also had some movie costumes on display, among other dresses from P&P '95!



4. Book related pet peeve: when you read a fantasy trilogy with complex worldbuilding and lots of characters and when you read the second book it doesn't have a synopsis at the start of all that happened in the first book. So you have to go back to leave through the first book before you can start with the second. This happened to me last week, when I wanted to start the second book of the excellent The Sword & The Staff series by Patrick Carr. Now, as it might be some time before I'm going to read the third book, I made a synopsis of this second one myself!

5. Dear British broadcasters: I'm very fond of you and love you for making all this lovely costume drama, but could you just stop for a moment. Just until I caught up with Call the Midwife, Mr. Selfridge, Passing Bells, Wolf Hall, Poldark, Indian Summers and How To Build A Castle (Phew). Thank you!

6. It's been quite a cold March here in The Netherlands, but it looks like spring is really about to start now. And just in time for the nice long Easter Weekend! To get myself in the mood, I made a little garden in my windowsill, which is great fun and will hopefully also give me a small harvest in a while. (from left to right: radishes, rucola, andives and parsley. This picture was taken about a week ago and especially the radishes are growing like crazy.)



I hope you're all enjoying the start of spring and I'm wishing you all a very good Easter. Be seeing you!

13 comments:

  1. Neat post! Your dress is fun, and that museum exhibition sounds really interesting. Something funny: I actually get annoyed when an author does write a synopsis. It feels repetitive. But I don't usually read a series as it's being written, so there isn't as much waiting time between. Nice garden! We had a good weekend here in Missouri, too; I'll have to start mine soon.

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    1. You're not the only one having that opinion about synopsis (what is the plural of synopsis?), on LiveJournal, I had someone commenting with exactly the same sentiment.

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    2. Synopses is the plural of synopsis.

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    3. Thanks, Hamlette! And yeah, I've seen both opinions. I don't get too annoyed about it, though, just a little. And Kara's probably right about it depending on the series.

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  2. Your windowsill garden is cute! I have peppers and maybe some purslane started on my windowsill (the purslane is a maybe cuz I'm not sure it'll germinate).

    Your costume is cool! I like the blue!

    And lastly, I really liked your contribution to Femnista. I haven't finished reading the whole issue, but I did read yours, and it was very insightful!

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    1. I had to look up what purslane was, I don't really recognize it as anything I've ever eaten, but I found some links that it is really healthy!

      Thanks very much for your compliment on my Femnista article! I must admit I haven't had time to read any of the articles in this issue yet.

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    2. I grow it more for the vibrant flowers than the edibleness, though it was fun to crunch in salads a few times last year :-)

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  3. Awesome dress! And how exciting that you have something to wear it to! You realize, of course, that we'll want to hear all about it, right? :)

    Ah, those British Broadcasters. They sure know how to load us up with stuff to watch, don't they? I am so behind on so many shows! *sigh* Slowly but surely I'm determined to wade my way through them all. At least we know we won't run out of stuff to watch! ;)

    As for synopses (thanks Hamlette! I didn't know that one either.), it really depends on the series and on how quickly I read the books. If it's been months since I read a book, a little refresher is nice. But not a lengthy one! If I'm reading the books all in row, then I'd probably skip the refresher anyway.

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    1. Oh, I'll definitely make sure to make a post about the Elfia Medieval/Fantasy festival I'm attending!

      In the last 10 years I've never run out of period drama stuff to watch, my to-be-watched list is only growing!

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  4. Your dress is awesome! And that's a fantastic exhibit that you visited recently :)

    Hee, we've been quite spoiled with the influx of period dramas that came out/came back recently, haven't we? I'm becoming a wee bit intrigued by Mr. Selfridge; I keep seeing it around but I never checked it out...

    Hope all is well with you! =)

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    1. Thanks!

      Mr. Selfridge is really interesting! Maybe it doesn't have the same quality as Call the Midwife or the first seasons of Downton, but it's good nonetheless and has one of my favourite period drama couples of the last years: Henri and Agnes *swoon*

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